Envoy AI Gateway vs Routerly
Envoy AI Gateway
aigateway.envoyproxy.ioRouterly
routerly.aiSide by side
| Figure | Envoy AI Gateway | Routerly |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · LLM Gateway Software | 8.4 (#8) | 7.8 (#16) |
| Spec score · LLM gateways | 8.4 (#10) | 8.0 (#14) |
| Deployment | The CLI can run locally on Linux and macOS, and production deployment uses Kubernetes with Envoy Gateway. | The maker provides Docker and installer-based deployment, and says the installer supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. |
| Intended users | The documentation identifies teams sharing models or tools, seeking centralized credentials, quotas, usage attribution, or failover as likely users. | The site describes Routerly as built for developers and use cases ranging from indie projects to enterprise deployments, including SaaS teams and local-first development. |
| Security | The project describes upstream authentication for securing connections to AI services and says provider credentials can be kept out of application workloads. | The documentation says provider API keys and project tokens are AES-256 encrypted at rest, and user passwords are bcrypt-hashed. |
Plans
In their own words
Envoy AI Gateway
Envoy AI Gateway, now named Agent Router, is an open-source control plane for managing AI and agent traffic through Envoy. It provides an OpenAI-compatible API for hosted and self-hosted models and MCP servers, with integrations for providers including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Mistral, and Anthropic. Traffic controls include model virtualization, provider failover, token quotas, and usage-based rate limiting. Its MCP gateway supports server multiplexing, tool routing, OAuth authentication, and observability; InferencePool support adds routing and load balancing for inference endpoints. Credentials can be managed centrally, and supported short-lived credential flows include AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and GCP Vertex AI. The project describes metrics collection and monitoring for AI workloads. The free open-source project is listed at free. Its CLI supports local use on Linux and macOS; production Kubernetes deployment uses Envoy Gateway and requires compatible dependencies. The project uses the Apache 2.0 license and points users to Discord and GitHub issues for help.
Routerly
Routerly is a self-hosted gateway for directing application requests to AI providers, tracking usage costs, and applying budgets. Its routing engine can use up to nine configurable policies, covering model choice, cost, provider health and performance, capability and context, budgets, rate limits, and fairness. It supports OpenAI and Anthropic wire formats, including streaming, so compatible clients can connect by changing the base URL. Listed providers include OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Ollama, Mistral, Cohere, xAI, and custom HTTP endpoints. Per-token costs can use built-in pricing presets or custom model prices. Budgets can measure cost, calls, or token usage globally, per project, or per token, over rolling or calendar windows. Projects can have separate bearer tokens, model pools, routing configurations, and budget limits. Routerly stores configuration and usage records in JSON files without requiring an external database. It can be deployed with Docker or an installer. The self-hosted plan costs nothing, carries the AGPL-3.0 license, and adds no markup to API calls.